


The Adventure of the Cardiff Bees

by fardareismai



Series: This Rose is Extra [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Gen, Roselock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 13:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>4-6 weeks after the events of A Scandal on Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes finds himself in Cardiff facing the impossible, and who should grab his hand and tell him to run but Rose Tyler? Story 3 in the This Rose is Extra series, a crossover with BBC's Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cardiff

**Author's Note:**

> Story 3 in This Rose is Extra. I definitely suggest reading The Wolf of Baskerville and A Scandal on Baker Street first because those set up the relationships and the basis for the story.
> 
> Thank you to every person who reads and/or reviews. You're all stars.

Sherlock was not certain how he had found himself in the present situation- hand-in-hand with Rose Tyler and running for his life from something that he would have sworn this morning was entirely impossible. Yet, as Rose’s laugh filled the air as she pulled him on ever faster, he found that he couldn’t regret it.  
  
~?~?~?~?~  
  
Sherlock Holmes was stuck in Cardiff for 24 hours. Why could zeppelins never create a schedule that did not involve a lengthy layover in an inconvenient location?  
  
He was coming from a frustratingly simple case in Plymouth. A number of local churches had discovered sheep’s blood smeared across the altars causing people to panic that a Satanic Cult had moved into town. Sherlock had had such high hopes for the case, but once he had arrived he had found nothing but university-aged pranksters and an incompetent police force. After finding the fools who had been splashing blood all over the place, he had booked a seat on the first zeppelin North without checking the schedule. Now he was here.  
  
Sherlock Holmes was in Cardiff for 24 hours and he was  _bored_.  
  
He hadn’t had a case that was, as John put it, ‘blog-worthy’ in three months. He’d begun feeling twitchy, reckless and self-destructive approximately eight weeks ago. Normally it didn’t take that long, but he’d had something occupying his mind in the previous weeks. However, She had bowed out of his life, and he could not think of a way (or a reason) to return Her to it. He had taken to reading the gossip magazines to even get a glimpse of Her, though he would never admit it to John or Mrs. Hudson. She had been absent from the papers for two weeks, however. They were speculating that She was on a cruise, though no one seemed able to decide if it was to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean or Alaska.  
  
Sherlock had gone rushing off after any case that looked halfway interesting, and so it was that Sherlock found himself in Cardiff for 24 hours looking for trouble. The inconvenient fact, however, was that  _nothing_  ever happened in Cardiff.  
  
Sherlock stalked up and down Millennium Square and the surrounding streets. He poked his nose into the back rooms of shops and restaurants. He wandered down alleys. He glared at men who looked like they were spoiling for a fight.  
  
Nothing happened. He got into no fights, found no murder victims, and not a single robbery in process. Over the course of the hour, he reached seven times for a pack of cigarettes that he did not have. Food held no savour for him, so none of the restaurants appealed, and the same held true for the pubs and bars. Everything here was so painfully  _ordinary_  that he wanted to scream or rip his hair out.  
  
Finally, after nearly two hours during which Sherlock grew ever more deranged, he sat on the edge of the Millennium Fountain and pulled out his mobile. It was time for desperate measures.  
  
 _In Cardiff 24 hrs. Give me work. SH._  
  
He pressed ‘send’ and the message disappeared from his screen on its way to Mycroft. If anyone knew what might be happening in Wales, it would be he.  
  
Five minutes later, Sherlock’s phone lit up with a text. There was an address and a short message:  
  
 _Police called to above earlier. No news since. Nothing else. Mycroft._  
  
Mycroft must be in a meeting, else he would have called. However, Sherlock now had a destination and, after pulling up a city map on his phone, took off in the direction of the bay.  
  
~?~?~?~?~  
  
Rose leaned her head back on the headrest in the Jeep as Mickey drove to the next in what had been an endless series of calls for their team since coming to Cardiff a fortnight ago.  
  
“I hate Cardiff,” she said in an offhand way. “Every time we end up here, the world nearly ends, and we all nearly die at least twice.”  
  
“You know, if we quit managing to actually  _save_  the world, we wouldn’t have to fill out the world-ending paperwork,” Gwen observed from the back.  
  
“And,” Tosh continued from beside Gwen, her lightly accented voice shaking with suppressed laughter, “if we let Owen get killed, we wouldn’t have to deal with his bitching and moaning any longer.”  
  
“Oi!” came Owen’s indignant response from the seat behind Mickey.  
  
“No, if Owen dies we’d have to fill out the ‘you let one of your team members get killed, even if he is a total pillock’ form,” Rose said, ignoring Owen. “It’s quite lengthy and specific. Gets filled out in triplicate and everything.”  
  
“My mum is always pleased when we go to Cardiff,” Tosh observed. “She says there’s too much trouble in London and Cardiff must be so relaxing for us.”  
  
The entire team burst into shocked laughter. With a massive rift in time and space running through the city, ‘relaxing’ was the last word that could be used by the visiting Torchwood team.  
  
“My mum’s the same way,” Rose agreed, once she had her breath back. “Pete won’t tell her what it means when he sends us down here ‘cause he’d get slapped silly.”  
  
“Nearly there, Boss,” Mickey said, pointing to the GPS device on the dash.  
  
“All right, team, I want everyone with a stunner, a smoke pack, and a breather. Stay in your groups of two- Angel and Cherry Blossom from above, Reverend and Pillock in the front door, and Mr. Idiot and myself will come from beneath. If the tip was right and we’re dealing with Apians, the smoke packs should be all we need. They’ll go into a bit of a trance, we can call clean-up from Torchwood 3, and we can finish the paperwork in time to be at the pub before last call. Drinks on Pete.”  
  
Everyone cheered at this last.  
  
“Everyone okay with that?”  
  
“Why do I have to be Pillock? I said I wanted my code name to be The Doctor,” Owen griped.  
  
“And I said that The Doctor isn’t allowed. If you’d picked an appropriate name and not acted like a pillock, you wouldn’t be Pillock,” Rose answered.  
  
“Just ‘cause you’ve got a lady boner for some alien idiot called The Doctor-“ Owen began, but was cut off there.  
  
“Harper!” Mickey barked. “You are getting perilously close to insubordination. Now it’s too much damn paperwork to have you court martialed, but I’d be very happy to knock your lights out myself. Are we clear?”  
  
“Crystal, sir,” Owen said with a slight sneer in his voice.  
  
“In conclusion, Harper,” Jake said, not looking up from his laptop screen as he addressed the man beside him, “this is why you’re Pillock. It’s mostly because Asshole will get us all sent to Human Resources.”  
  
Owen continued grumbling until Tosh took a rolled up magazine and smacked him on the back of the head.  
  
Rose sighed to herself. Owen was the best xenobiologist in Europe and was haughty with the fact. Rose didn’t mind working with geniuses, even geniuses with dubious social skills, but Dr. Owen Harper was a trial.  
  
Mickey pulled up to the warehouse that the call had been about. Some hysterical woman had called the police about massive bees. She’d explained that she didn’t mean two inches massive, she meant five feet massive, and the police had informed Torchwood. Everyone present knew that bees as humans knew them were not originally Terran creatures, so they’d assumed that they were dealing with Apians, the original species from which honey bees were descended. They were peaceful, much like their decedents on Earth, but unsettling to look at.  
  
Each member of the team took a smoker (exactly the same device that beekeepers on Earth used, but larger to deal with a larger animal) breathers (so they wouldn’t take in too much smoke) and a stunner (just in case the worst happened).  
  
Tosh and Gwen climbed the stairs on the outside of the building to get to the roof. Jake and Owen moved around the perimeter to the front door, and Mickey and Rose found the entrance to the cooling tunnels beneath the warehouse.


	2. Run for your Life

Sherlock backed away from two of the largest insects he had ever seen. They looked very much like common wasps, but they were nearly as long- from tip of sting to fuzzy antennae- as he was. He had just come up against the wall and was contemplating the ignominious death that awaited him at the end of an 18-inch stinger when the door to the fire escape burst open and two dark-haired women entered.  
  
“Drop to the ground,” called a Japanese-accented voice that he presumed came from the shorter of the two women- the one with Asiatic features. He couldn’t be sure because their mouths and noses were covered by what appeared to be silver surgical masks.  
  
Sherlock did as she said, dropping to the floor with alacrity.  
  
“Hold your breath as long as you’re able,” this voice was accented Welsh, and presumably came from the other woman. Sherlock followed this instruction as well, and the room filled slowly with smoke.  
  
The buzzing of the creatures slowed, but did not stop.  
  
“These aren’t Apians,” the Welsh voice cried.  
  
“Sussed that, did you?” the Japanese voice griped.  
  
“Stunners!” the Welsh voice ordered and there was suddenly an odor of ozone and burning chitin in the air and the buzzing silenced.  
  
The Japanese woman crossed over to him. “You can breathe now if you like. The smoke isn’t actually toxic, it’ll just give your throat a bit of a tickle- like too much woodsmoke.”  
  
From the other side of the room, the Welsh woman was talking into a radio. “This is Angel and Cherry Blossom to Bad Wolf and Mr. Idiot, come in, over.”  
  
“This is Bad Wolf, go ahead Angel, over.”  
  
“They’re not Apians, they’re Dolichovesputians. Team 1 discharged stunners. In addition, we have a local, non-hostile, over.”  
  
“Maybe we can put Pillock on babysitting duty, over.”  
  
“Oi,” came a third voice from over the radio.  
  
“Pillock, Reverend, is there anything on your level, over?”  
  
“Nothing, Bad Wolf,” came another new voice, presumably Reverend.  
  
“Mr. Idiot and I are at the underground entrance to the basement. We can hear them on the other side. Angel and Cherry Blossom, take the local to Pillock. Pillock, take the local to the Jeep and try not to convince Wales to leave the PRGB. Angel, come down through the cooling tunnels and meet Mr. Idiot and me here, Cherry Blossom, Reverend, you’ll take the door on the main level into the basement. Everyone clear, over?”  
  
“Oh my god,” the Japanese woman said, getting a good look at Sherlock. “Gweh-Angel, come take a look!”  
  
The Welsh woman (Gwyneth or Gwen, possibly Gwendolyn or Guinevere, though those were less likely) moved over and took a look at Sherlock as well.  
  
“Bad Wolf, this is Angel again. You’re going to want to see the local, he might not need as much babysitting as you think, over.”  
  
“Don’t really have the time, Angel, over.”  
  
“It’s Sherlock Holmes, over.”  
  
There was silence for a long moment over the radio, then the voice returned. “Bring him into the cooling tunnels, Angel. Pillock, stay with Reverend and Cherry Blossom. Mr. Holmes, if you get my team hurt in any way, I will take payment out of your skin, over.”  
  
The Japanese woman took the radio from the Welsh woman. “Pillock, how long will a stunner blast keep these bugs out for, over?”  
  
“An hour, not much more. Did you get them with any of the smoke at all, over?”  
  
“Yeah, a bit, didn’t put them to sleep though, over.”  
  
“No, but it’ll help keep them out. We may have as much as 90 minutes, over.”  
  
“Then we’d damn well better hurry,” the voice that belonged to Bad Wolf interrupted. “Reverend, call HQ for pick-up, over.”  
  
“Aye, Bad Wolf, and Retcon for the local, over?”  
  
“I’ll deal with that, over.”  
  
The tone sounded rather ominous to Sherlock.  
  
“As you say, Boss, over.”  
  
“Everyone get moving, we storm the hive in a quarter hour. Bad Wolf out.”  
  
The two women led Sherlock through the warehouse. The small Japanese woman separated from them at the first floor, joining a dark-haired and a blonde man who were waiting by a door that apparently went into the underground basement of the warehouse. The Welsh woman (Gwyneth, Sherlock still called her in his head) led him through the front doors and through the entrance to the underground cooling tunnels.  
  
“Who are you?”  
  
“You can call me Angel.”  
  
“I can call you that, but it’s not who you are. It’s some sort of code name.”  
  
“Clever of you to figure out.”  
  
“Is it Gwen or Gwyneth? Your partner nearly called you one of them.”  
  
“It’s both. Remind me to kick her arse once we’ve dealt with the bugs.”  
  
Sherlock nodded, though he was fairly certain that she was being sarcastic.  
  
“Who is Bad Wolf?”  
  
“You’ll find out soon enough.” There was a touch of amusement in the woman’s voice that gave Sherlock pause.  
  
“Why the secrecy? Why code names?”  
  
“In case we meet a local.”  
  
“I’m not a local, I’m from London, which you’re fully aware of since you appear to know who I am.”  
  
“You’re local, comparatively speaking.”  
  
Something in her tone made Sherlock believe that she wasn’t talking about the fact that he was from the People’s Republic of Great Britain. He thought about six-food long wasps, and shook his head. The idea he’d had was impossible.  
  
“What does Bad Wolf want with me? It sounds like, normally, if you met a ‘local’ you’d just pack them off in the car and have someone watch them to be sure they didn’t get into trouble or get hurt. What’s different about me?”  
  
“You’ll have to ask the Bad Wolf.”  
  
“I intend to,” Sherlock said, darkly. This whole thing was completely absurd. He was beginning to suspect drugs in the ventilation system of the warehouse, and he wondered if that was the real reason for the breathing apparatus that these people were wearing.  
  
Gwen and Sherlock could hear two voices up ahead, one was female, one was male, and both were slightly muffled. Like Gwen they must be wearing the breathing apparatus. As they rounded the last corner, Sherlock stopped. He stood, completely shocked by what he saw before him.  
  
She was there. Mickey Smith as well, but Sherlock could not seem to take his eyes from Her. She had her back to him, but Mickey noticed him over Her shoulder. Sherlock could see the man’s eyes crease at the corners as he nodded over Her shoulder.  
  
She turned and looked at him for a moment before turning her eyes on his escort. “Is your stunner charged back up, Angel?”  
  
Gwen checked the weapon at her hip. “Yeah, finally. And you can go ahead and call me Gwen, he's already figured it out. Cherry Blossom slipped upstairs.”  
  
“Knowing him he might have figured it out anyway. Mr. Holmes.” Sherlock flinched internally at the coolness in her voice. She was, apparently, still trying to avoid the awkwardness of their last encounter, though there were no paparazzi here. “I can always use an extra set of capable hands.”  
  
She pulled from her pack a mask like the one her entire team were wearing and handed it to Mickey, jerking her head toward Sherlock in a nonverbal order. Mickey came over and explained the device, which was quite simple- just put it over one's nose and mouth and it filtered everything except a healthy mix of oxygen out of the air.  
  
“Great for firefighters, actually,” Mickey was saying as he helped Sherlock adjust the straps that held it in place. “No heavy oxygen tanks, simple to use, and works in nearly any atmosphere with any oxygen at all, even heavy smoke. All of the stations in London that have started using them are seeing much lower rates of lung disease already. R&D is thrilled.”  
  
Rose walked over to join them holding the silver weapon that each of her team carried at their waist. “This,” she said, holding it out to him, “doesn't exist, if anyone ever asks. It's a Chonii stunner- or it's based on one, anyway. Regardless, it's not a toy. These are completely out of date, mind. The charging time is entirely unacceptable, and I'll be speaking with the director as soon as we get out of here with our skins intact, but it's still the most advanced piece of technology that you've ever touched, so  _don't_  get clever.” Her honey-coloured eyes glared at him coolly and Sherlock nodded without saying anything.  
  
She explained how to fire, and warned him about the 7-minute lag between shots. Mickey returned a moment later with two devices that looked exactly like the smoker he had seen beekeepers use, but bigger.  
  
Rose took them in her hands, and handed them to Sherlock saying, “these are actually your job, the stunner is just for insurance. Dolichovesputians don't travel in big groups. There won't be more than five behind that door.”  
  
Sherlock wondered how certain she was of that, or if she was putting on a brave front, but did not question her.  
  
Rose continued, “the smoke will slow them down making it easier for us to stun them. Stay behind the three of us, but try to get the smoke into the room.”  
  
Mickey pulled out his radio then, “this is Mr. Idiot, calling the topside team, are you ready, over?”  
  
The voice that Sherlock had decided must be Reverend responded. “Ready, Mr. Idiot, over.”  
  
  
Rose took over from here. “There will be no more than five behind the door. Mr. Holmes has a stunner as well and has been given an overview, so we have two extra shots for insurance. Pillock, I want you to hold your shot in reserve. Stay behind Reverend and Cherry Blossom, you'll need to mop up if anything happens. Everyone,  _do not_  depend on the extra shots. Shoot with the intent to hit. In addition, and this is very important so shut up, Pillock, and listen to me, they will not have traveled without a queen. She will be very obvious- bigger, quicker, meaner and cleverer than any of the others. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but  _neutralize her last_. If you neutralize her before the others, they will go into a protective frenzy and we will all be running for our lives. Everyone clear, over?”  
  
“Clear, over.”  
  
“Clear, over.”  
  
“Clear, over.”  
  
Rose looked at the three standing around her.  
  
“Clear, Boss,” said Mickey.  
  
“Clear,” said Gwen.  
  
“Clear enough,” Sherlock said, unwilling to admit how out of his depth he was feeling here.  
  
Rose nodded and she and Mickey stood on either side of the door. She lifted the radio to her lips again. “Now!” she cried.  
  
Sherlock couldn't really see, so he listened. He heard four weapon discharges and smelled the ozone odor that came with them. He heard three chitinous bodies hit surfaces. He heard the humming buzz of the wasp's wings quieten, but not disappear. Someone had missed their mark.  
  
“Owen, Sherlock,” Rose had apparently given up on code names in the heat of things, “we're going to need your stunners. Get the two drones, I'll get the queen.”  
  
Sherlock came to her side, drawing his weapon as the two remaining drones menaced toward him and Rose. The queen remained- as Rose had said, she was absolutely enormous- she flitted around what appeared to be a pod of papery eggs. Sherlock lifted his stunner and shot one of the drones, hoping that Owen (Pillock) had as good an eye and would take out the other. However, once the drone Sherlock had shot fell, the queen swept viciously fast towards Owen's team. The other man screamed and fired his stunner at the queen, bringing her down.  
  
“NO!” Rose cried.  
  
The pitch of the final drone's buzz picked up horribly. Where it had been menacing slowly toward them before, it now flew in all rage at them, screaming.  
  
Rose grabbed Sherlock's hand and cried “Run!”  
  
And run they did, Rose, Gwen, Mickey and Sherlock. They ran like mad out into the cooling tunnels like the demons of Hell were after them- and Sherlock could hardly swear that they weren't. Rose let out a whooping laugh that was echoed by Mickey and Gwen both and Rose pulled Sherlock's hand as she picked up her speed. He was shocked- he knew that he was fit, but she could apparently run him into the ground.  
  
Rose dropped Sherlock's hand and stopped, turning, stunner still in her hand. Sherlock stopped as well and she turned to him, golden fire in her eyes. “Go,” she ordered, and the growl in her voice made him remember her code name 'Bad Wolf.' He turned tail and followed Mickey and Gwen.  
  
About 15 seconds later, they heard the stunner discharge and the heavy thud of the insectiod body hitting the concrete, and they all slowed to a stop, panting. Rose caught them up a few moments later, also breathing hard, but not stopping.  
  
“We've got to get back to the surface. Maddox’s clean-up team will be here shortly, then it's back to HQ for debrief and kicking Owen's skinny ass.”  
  
“Me first,” Mickey said.  
  
“I outrank you,” she replied, and they made their way up the stairs and back to the street level.


	3. Debrief

Owen had to travel with the wasp creatures, so Sherlock was given his place in the Jeep with the rest of the team. He was introduced around.  
  
Toshiko Sato, codename Cherry Blossom was raised in a traditional Japanese home and spoke and wrote fluently in that language. Sherlock could see the distinctive ink marks on her fingers that could only accumulate from writing lines from top to bottom and right-to-left.  
  
Gwyneth Cooper, codename Angel was unmarried and unattached. Her accents told that she was a Wales (Cardiff area, specifically) native, but had lived in London for between 3 and 5 years. She did crochet and, though Sherlock was less certain of this, he would suspect that she knitted, her fingertips were callused in the right places.  
  
Jake Simmonds, codename Reverend had lost a partner. He had worn a ring on his left hand for many years and there was a permanent mark, but the ring was no longer there. If Sherlock were to give his professional estimation, the time since the ring had been worn meant that his loss had occurred with the Cybermen. Sherlock suspected that Jake was gay, but could not prove it yet.  
  
Mickey and Rose Sherlock had already met. He could pull no more of their personal history or habits from his observations of them at this time, but he could see that they had been running hard for as much as two weeks- around the time that Rose had disappeared from the tabloids.  
  
Mickey parked in a nondescript parking garage in the business district of the city and the team piled out of the vehicle. Sherlock followed, warily. Rose had largely ignored him since dropping his hand in the cooling tunnels, and he was taking the opportunity to observe her in this new setting. Before, when he had met her, it had just been her and Mickey Smith, a partnership of equals, even if her title was higher than his. Here she was a leader of men, and she was extraordinary. Her team teased and laughed in an unfeigned way that made it clear that they were friends, not merely work acquaintances, but it was also obvious that, had Rose asked it of them, any single member of the team would have stepped into the mouth of an active volcano for her. Young as she was, she inspired loyalty.  
  
Sherlock knew that he was thinking about Rose Tyler to avoid thinking about everything else that had happened that day. In particular, that he had seen something that could not have existed. He had, in the past, been forced to doubt the evidence of his senses, but he was now forced to question the sanity of the people around him as well and he did not want to. He wanted to believe that Rose Tyler was as clever and sane as he had always believed, but now he doubted.  
  
Sherlock followed the team into the Cardiff visitor's center as they continued chatting and laughing. Rose went up to the desk and rang a bell twice, and the entire team filed behind the desk and disappeared. Sherlock watched it happen, mouth falling open ever wider as each of the five people with whom he had entered disappeared one after the other.   
  
Sherlock continued to stand and gape for fully three minutes before Rose rushed out from nowhere, but apparently behind the desk and cried, “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.” She grabbed his hand and lead him around, still speaking. “You've been so quiet, I sort of forgot this was a first for you. No one ever really comes to the visitor's center in Cardiff, so it's a good front for us. The bell sets up the perception filter- DNA match, if someone who doesn't work for Torchwood were to ring it, whoever is downstairs would come up and be the visitor center employee, but that's really only happened three times in the five years since I've been around, so mostly it warns the folks downstairs that someone's coming and sends up the lift.” Rose had taken Sherlock's hand and was leading him behind the desk as she babbled. He could hear nerves in the speed and timbre of her voice and observed that she did not meet his eyes, though he was peculiarly pleased by the feel of their hands clasped.  
  
Rose lead Sherlock behind the desk and he realized that there was a lift there. Sherlock stopped and frowned- he had not noticed it before she had lead him to it, and he noticed  _everything_. He dropped Rose's hand and walked back to the front of the desk. The lift was gone, and so was Rose. He walked behind the desk again, and there she stood before the lift, watching him with an odd light in her eyes. Sherlock turned from where he could see her and looked at the room behind him. It looked like it should. He walked in front of the desk and the room remained the same. He walked around the other side of the desk and, after reaching the same point he could see Rose and the lift. She had leaned back on the door of the lift with her arms crossed and a small smile playing across her expressive mouth.  
  
“Impossible,” Sherlock said, brusquely.  
  
“Don't much like the word 'impossible,' me,” Rose said. “And besides, you can see it.”  
  
“I could also see six-foot wasps in the warehouse. Perhaps the hallucinogens have not yet left my system.”  
  
“What would convince you if not your senses?” Rose asked, cocking her head to the left in honest curiosity.  
  
Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her, but her face remained earnest. She believed, and he had an odd sense that she wanted him to believe.  
  
Rose watched those light-coloured eyes (sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes nearly gold). They were, inexplicably, dear to her. She wanted to prove to him that aliens and perception filters and rifts in space-time were real. Armed with that knowledge, he might just believe her when she finally explained who and what she, herself, was.  
  
Sherlock continued to watch Rose warily, but her hopeful expression did not change. “Six-foot wasps can't exist outside of a cinema or stage,” he said, voice low. “And to hide half of a room requires projectors, mirrors and backdrops.”  
  
Rose remembered another man that she had met in Cardiff who had dismissed the evidence of his eyes and claimed that empirical evidence of a universe beyond his ken was 'impossible.' Like Charles Dickens, Sherlock Holmes was trying to reach for the 'logical' explanation- the one best explained by the world that he knew and understood.  
  
“Would you like to go looking for the mirrors and backdrops?” Rose asked, with a sweep of her hand in invitation. “Or else,” she continued, “would you like to examine the wasps?”  
  
“I would like some explanations, Ms. Tyler.” Sherlock was inexplicably angry with her. How could she take it all so calmly? He was accusing her of manipulating him, lying to him, trying to make him believe the impossible, but she stood, meeting his eyes, awaiting his judgment as though she had expected his reaction. As though she had nothing to hide.  
  
“I would love to explain to you, Mr. Holmes. I told you once that, if I explained, you wouldn’t believe me, and you still might not, but you’re in too deep now for me to try to hide it all from you. I will answer every question that you have, let you examine anything you want to see, and I hope you believe me at the end of it all, but my first priority is my team. You’re welcome to sit in on the mission debrief and learn what you can from that, and when that is finished I’m yours to interrogate.”   
  
Rose hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. She did not want to run him out of her life, but she was naturally honest and could not imagine lying to him any longer. She seemed to spend her entire life lying, but she wanted to give Sherlock honesty- both for her own desires and because of the futility of lying to a man like Sherlock Holmes.  
  
Rose lifted her hand and wiggled the fingers in an invitation to take it as she had done nearly countless times to another man who was sometimes a third man still in another universe that both was and wasn’t so different from the one she was in. Sherlock glared at the hand, and Rose held her breath- he could either accept and let her try to prove herself to him, or he could leave through the front door and walk out of her life. She wasn’t sure why it mattered to her so much, but she desperately wanted the chance- even if he left afterword, she wanted to try.  
  
Sherlock was at a loss. He was afraid of what this woman represented for him. If he took her hand he was giving her the chance to change his world. He wasn’t sure what those wasps were or what kind of technology could make half a room disappear without a trace or create a stunning weapon like he had used that day, but he had a distinct impression that Rose Tyler would make him believe it. In addition, if he took her hand, his world might change in other ways. He felt himself becoming more and more  _involved_  with this woman- he could not remain as detached as he preferred where Rose Tyler was concerned.  
  
In the end, however, Sherlock’s curiosity outweighed his fears and his fingers found hers. Rose grinned widely and Sherlock’s mouth tried to mirror her smile before he brought himself back under control. It was always that way with her, he mused, making him smile when he’d had no intention of doing so.  
  
“This is all impossible,” Sherlock said as Rose lead him to the lift by his hand. He meant the giant insects, the guns, the room, and the little thrill in his blood at the feel of her hand in his.  
  
“’There are more things in heaven and on Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio,’” Rose murmured.  
  
Sherlock glanced at the woman beside him sharply. He had met Rose Tyler, foolish heiress. He had met Rose Tyler, military commander. He had met Rose Tyler flirty lunch date. He was always a bit surprised when he met Rose Tyler, holder of a university education and reader of classic literature. He wasn’t sure why, but it always seemed to catch him off guard.  
  
The lift descended and the doors opened with a swooshing noise and Sherlock felt his jaw drop again. The area looked like something out of a science fiction show- a massive bank of computers that had just a few too many buttons to be a standard brand, a glassed-in medical bay with three of the wasp-creatures that he had seen in the warehouse laying still on tables, a woman in a lab coat examining them, and a young man dressed in the same sort of uniform Rose was wearing having a nasty cut in his arm patched by what appeared to be a 12-year-old in another lab coat. Looking to his left, Sherlock could see what appeared to be a typical bank of cubicles and conference rooms that one might see in any office in the country, but looking to his right, he could see what appeared to be cells, one with the queen wasp, two of her drones, and her eggs (all but the eggs flying again), another with three creatures that were shaped like humans but with pasty skin, sunken eyes, and animalistic mouths.  
  
Sherlock looked at Rose, who had been watching him take in his surroundings and had an eyebrow raised as though expecting something from him.  
  
“I perceive that we are underground,” Sherlock said, uncertainly. It was hardly his most brilliant deduction, but it was the best that he could manage at this point, overwhelmed as he was.  
  
Rose threw back her head and laughed. No one milling about the room or sitting at the desks seemed to notice or mind, but Sherlock felt the sound wash over him, killing a modicum of his anxiety. For once, he did not hold back and smiled weakly at her.  
  
One of the doors in the 'ordinary' part of the place opened and Mickey Smith poked his head out. “Rose, come on, we’re waiting on you,” he called over to them, then drew his head back in.  
  
Rose crossed to the window of the medical bay and tapped on the glass to get the attention of the injured man. When he looked at her, she mouthed “ _you okay?_ ” through the glass, with a ‘thumbs-up’ gesture to match. The man smiled and returned her thumbs-up, then waved her on. Rose sent a flirtatious wave to the extremely young-looking doctor tending the man and, not once letting go of Sherlock’s hand, crossed towards the room from which Mickey had called them.  
  
Sherlock was grateful for Rose’s hand in his, though it garnered them a few looks from the denizens of the cubicles as they passed through the area. Rose seemed un-affected by the speculative looks, so Sherlock determined that it was not important to her and therefore not important to him.  
  
Rose opened the door to a conference room that could have been in nearly any office building in the world save that it didn’t have a window. She dropped Sherlock’s hand as she entered, pulling to herself her 'leader of men' persona. Sherlock inched around her and took a seat in one of the chairs on the edge of the room, away from the center of attention but with a good view for observation.  
  
Rose took her seat at the head of the table and smiled at everyone. Jake, Tosh, and Gwen smiled back, genuinely, Mickey nodded and Owen continued to glower. She was sure that would come to a head shortly, but she’d try to avoid the confrontation in front of everyone if she could.  
  
“Nice job today, team,” Rose began cheerfully. “I note that we all came out alive this time. Always good. I hate filling out paperwork on dead teammates.” She gave a grin that told all of them that she didn’t mean it. The answering smiles made Sherlock sure that it was a running joke for their team.  
  
“Few points to go over. First of all, apparently the resident population of Cardiff needs a refresher course in the difference between bees and wasps. Perhaps something for all of us to do in our retirements. Second, I’d like everyone to meet Mr. Sherlock Holmes whose steady hands kept everything from turning even more pear-shaped than it started. You can ask him later about the stuff in the legitimate papers, but the first person who asks about the crap in the tabloids is buying  _everyone’s_  drinks tonight.” Gwen rolled her eyes, and Jake gave a snort.  
  
“Speaking of steady hands...” Rose’s tone turned serious and she turned to Toshiko Sato who looked a bit ashamed. “Tosh, I need you to spend tomorrow on the firing range. Even if the team gets called out, I’d like you to stay behind. That’s the second time since we’ve been in Cardiff that you’ve missed in a firefight and I don’t want it happening again.” Rose’s expression softened a bit, as did her tone. “It’s not a punishment, Tosh. We’ve all got to be in top form when we’re out. Okay?”  
  
The small Japanese woman nodded and gave a smile to Rose, who returned it gently.  
  
“Owen, and this goes for everyone else as well,” Rose began, looking even more serious than before. “I’m your Team Leader and your commanding officer. I’ve given everyone the right to question me or any order you’re given in the safety of the vehicles, the Hub, the radios- anyplace we might be where we’re not looking down our noses at something ghastly. However,” her voice took on a commanding tone now, “when we’re engaged and I give an order like ‘don’t shoot the bloody queen,’ or ‘take out the drones, I’ve got the bloody queen,’ I expect those orders followed.” Rose’s eyes held Owen pinned for a moment before leaving the man and sweeping the rest of the team. “I need you to trust me. If you think you can’t trust me, I expect you to bring it up, but never until after we’re out of danger. Understood?”  
  
“Like we were supposed to trust you that the aliens in the warehouse were harmless?” Owen asked in a belligerent voice. “Or what about trusting that there were only five of the filthy things behind the door?”  
  
Rose sighed. She had hoped that he wouldn’t do this. She had even called Tosh out before him to make it clear that it wasn’t personal. He  _was_  doing it, however, and in front of everyone because Owen Harper was nothing if not vindictive and childish.  
  
“Harper,” Rose began, switching to the man’s surname in a subtle attempt to remind him of his subordinate status, “you’ve been on the Torchwood Prime team for 18 months now. If you still expect missions to go to plan, you haven’t been paying enough attention.”  
  
“That's just it,  _commander_ ,” Harper said with a jeer in his voice at her title. “It's not just the occasional mission that goes sideways, it's everything you touch.”  
  
Sherlock watched Rose stiffen. Mickey sat up straighter in his chair in what Sherlock recognized as his 'protect Rose' mode.  
  
Owen continued, “do you know that the other teams at Torchwood don't actually face as many threats in a year as we can in a single month? Why is that, _Rose_?” The use of her first name was a deliberate statement that Owen Harper was not cowed by Rose's position of authority.  
  
“The lower level Torchwood teams go out a fraction of the number of times we do, Harper,” Mickey growled. Rose placed her hand on his shoulder to silence him, however.  
  
“Clearly, Owen, you have something that concerns you that you would like to bring up with me. I would have preferred for you to take this up in private, but clearly you prefer to have your teammates here while you air your grievances. You are welcome to do so now.” Rose's voice was surprisingly light. “You will not be interrupted.” This last was not for Owen's benefit, Sherlock noticed, but a warning to the rest of the team. Clearly Mickey was not the only one who might have jumped to Rose's defense against the insufferable man.  
  
“Fine, I'll talk. I joined Torchwood three years ago and heard of the Prime Team immediately. I'd heard that they were Earth's best defense against the alien threat. When I got assigned to Prime, I was thrilled- then I found out that the commanders were the Director's daughter and her best friend. I found out that we're not allowed to shoot aliens, only stun them because of some bullshit moral code that she brought from some alien shag she once had. I found out that we don't defend the Earth, we spend more time letting aliens wander around Cardiff and London than actually sending the stupid bastards back to the stars. I found out that the bimbo in the papers who shags internet celebrities has the right to order me to risk my life.” At this point, Owen was breathing hard, Mickey was wound tight as a bowstring, Jake and Gwen were glaring daggers at Harper, and Tosh sat staring open-mouthed and disbelieving at him.  
  
Rose alone looked calm. She had not looked away from Owen during his tirade. She had barely moved from her lounging position in the chair at the top of the table, save when 'alien shag' was mentioned to brush her hand lightly over the silver chain that she always wore before returning her hand languidly to the tabletop.  
  
“You're right, Harper,” Rose said quietly without a trace of the anger that even Sherlock, who had known her the least time, could feel thrumming through him at the young doctor's words. “I am Pete's daughter, and I have been on the Torchwood Prime team with Mickey since its inception. That is, however, mostly because, when we joined, it was just another Torchwood field team. Mickey and I made Prime what it is by having the lowest number of casualties and injuries in that first year of any Torchwood field team in history. We did that by using non-violent and non-lethal methods. By choosing to live and let live with non-hostile visitors and employing diplomacy more often than weapons. Mickey's and my methods  _made_  Torchwood Prime. We started as regular field agents and, over the course of four years, became commanders. And you weren't  _assigned_  to Torchwood Prime. I requested you because you were the best, and I only take the best. If, however, it is our methods to which you object, you are welcome to put in for a transfer. I will speak to the Director and be sure that you are put on a team or in a position that suits your skills.”  
  
Sherlock watched Rose. He could not have looked away if he'd wanted to. Her accent seemed to drop from her voice making it sharp and cool. Her words became ever more precise. Her eyes seemed to glow with a golden light. She was exquisite.  
  
“I think it would be best if you left now,” Rose continued. “Take your laptop and paperwork back to your rooms and finish them there. I think you will be able to concentrate better than here at the Hub.”  
  
Harper, coward that he was, took the opportunity. He practically ran for the door. Just as he was about to open it, however, Rose's voice stopped him one last time.  
  
“Also, if you ever refer to  _anything_  in my past as an 'alien shag,' you might consider looking for a new  _planet_  because this one will become quite uncomfortable for you. Am I understood?”  
  
“Aye, sir,” he mumbled, and scrambled out the door, nearly slamming it behind him.  
  
The silence hung in the room for two breathless minutes. Finally, Rose broke. Her erect spine slumped forward, her cold face crumpled, and she let out a long and shaky breath.  
  
“The stupid prat,” she muttered, and her voice cracked.  
  
Mickey ran a hand over her back and she leaned into his shoulder- into the comfort of her familiar and well-beloved friend. After only a minute, however, Rose sat back up and managed a small smile at the rest of her team.  
  
“Sorry, guys. I think maybe you should all play hooky with the paperwork for tonight. I'll probably make an early night of it, so enjoy the pub on Torchwood. If Harper makes it in, make sure he buys you a round since he brought up the tabloids first.”  
  
She was trying to make a joke of it because if it wasn't serious, it wouldn't hurt. They all knew what she was doing, but they allowed it because she was Rose, and she deserved to be allowed to be strong even (or especially) when she wasn't.  
  
Jake, Tosh and Gwen got up and left the conference room, each offering a good-night, a gentle touch, an apology, or some combination of the three to their commanding officer. Mickey stayed by her side until the door was closed behind them.  
  
“Gods, Mickey,” she murmured, “what would He think of me now?”  
  
“He was mad for you, Rose. You could do no wrong.”  
  
“Rose Tyler of the Powell Estates, shop girl and youth gymnast could do no wrong. The girl who liked flirting with pretty boys and saw the universe through rose-coloured spectacles. The girl who reminded him of innocence and beauty and could smother his guilt in love. That's who could do no wrong. These days I'm the guilty one. I'm an old soldier at 26. I'm the one who needs someone innocent to see the wonders of the universe through.”  
  
Mickey put a finger to her lips to silence her. “Rose,” he said, quietly and just a little angrily, “you have more wonder in one finger than most of humanity will ever have in their entire lives. Do you remember the first time we met that Barcelonan couple with their dog in Blackwell?” Mickey's eyes sparkled, and the tears in Rose's eyes seemed to shine less bright. “You spent five minutes cooing over that damn noseless thing before you bothered talking to them. Lucky for you they loved that dog like their kid and showing it affection wormed your way into their hearts. They still send you Christmas cards.”  
  
“They don't celebrate Christmas on Barcelona, that's a Human concept. It's their winter festival called-”  
  
“Don't much care, Rose. Do you remember the ones that looked like jellyfish on the coast of Sussex?”  
  
“Those were so beautiful-”  
  
“And vain. You telling them how spectacular they were convinced them to come with us and get sorted with disguises and filters and the like so they didn't cause a panic. Rose, you just being you, seeing the beautiful and the wonderful in the universe saves all of us every day. You saved the Doctor with it, and now you save all of us.”  
  
“I'm not his Rose anymore.”  
  
“You're right, you're not. You're older. You're smarter. You're better. If you were still the Doctor's Rose, you'd have wasted your time here.”  
  
Rose smiled. “I'm my own Rose now, and that's even better than being the Doctor's Rose. Though, I have to admit, if I'd never been the Doctor's Rose, I wouldn't be my own Rose.”  
  
“True enough. I suppose it was all worth it, then,” Mickey said with a small smile.  
  
At that moment, Sherlock shifted in his seat and the two friends turned to look at him. He had been listening to their conversation unobserved and had gained a surprising amount of information from it, even if it was all hard to piece together into a picture that fit. Rose had promised to explain everything, but it did not stop his mind from trying to create a picture from the pieces that he did have. However, the chair was not built for comfort, and Sherlock was not built for sitting still. The involuntary movement had brought the revealing conversation to a close, it would seem.  
  
Mickey looked startled and wary, but Rose just laughed. “Gods, Mr. Holmes. That's twice now that I've completely forgotten you were there. Not used to a man who can sit quiet, me.” She glanced at her watch. “The Hub will be clearing out pretty soon. I know I told you I'd show you around, but it'll be easier if we don't have the entire staff breathing down our necks.” She turned to Mickey and told him to go, that they would work on the mission paperwork in the morning. “Pete and I can pay for the pub tab for everyone but Owen. He's on his own tonight, I'm still too angry to buy him a drink, yeah?”  
  
Mickey nodded and, with a last stroke of his hand down her back, got up and left the conference room.


	4. Coming Out

Rose sighed and, without looking at Sherlock, rose to pace the edge of the room like a trapped creature. She then began to babble, “Right, questions. I can feel your questions from here. It's huge, all of this. World-changing. I know that. Know it better than most really. It's hard to take in and-”  
  
Rose was cut off as Sherlock, in a move that surprised even him, stepped into her space. He reached forward and, hesitantly, almost as if he wasn't sure he was allowed, placed his fingertips under her chin. He tilted her head up so that their eyes could meet. “There's one question that must be asked first,” Sherlock said, removing his hand from her face. “Are you able to show me this? You needn't if you're too... distracted.”   
  
That hadn't really come out as Sherlock had wanted. He was concerned, but he knew he sounded analytical as ever. He did not do sentiment.  
  
Rose smiled at Sherlock, but she felt a bit sad as well. She was only too used to men who had thousands (billions) of words, but none that could express emotion, and no understanding of how to express anything without words.  
  
“Honestly,” she said, moving away from him, “I could use the distraction.” She sat back in the seat at the head of the table and, with a wave of her hand indicated that Sherlock should sit in Mickey’s recently vacated seat. Once his long limbs were arranged in an artless sprawl, Rose leaned forward with her forearms on the edge of the table, looking at her hands.  
  
“So there are a couple of things we should go over before I show you the Hub, ‘cause there are things you have to accept or none of the rest of this will work. First, the universe is absolutely teeming with life- sentient and non, hostile and non. It’s not like Star Trek, it’s actually even more amazing and wonderful and mad because it’s not just people who are painted different colours. It’s all sorts.”  
  
“Including six-foot wasps?”  
  
Rose finally met his eyes with a sparkling grin. “Exactly, Mr. Holmes. Actually, Dolichovesputians are mostly interstellar pests. They can survive the vacuum of space without any issues and build their nests on any ship or space trash that stays put long enough. They’re non-sentient by our standards, but they’re mildly telepathic and have a hive-based communication system. They’re the distant relations of bees and wasps here on Earth, actually.”  
  
Sherlock kept his expression entirely neutral. He reached for her hand and laid it out on the table, covering it lightly with his own. He did not twine their fingers together but rested his fingertips on her wrist. It might look like a casual position, but he was monitoring her pulse for evidence of lying.  
  
“Go on,” he murmured.  
  
Rose looked at their hands for a moment. Sherlock was not the Doctor- constantly grabbing her hand and tugging her along with him. He did not touch when it wasn’t necessary, in her experience. If he had taken her hand it must be to utilitarian purpose. As she looked at the arrangement of their two hands she could see that his fingers rested gently on her pulse point. Taking her pulse to catch any signs of deception, she concluded. In her head, she heard an estuary accent ask “are you deducting?” with almost insulting surprise, but pride enough to overwhelm that.  
  
Rose sighed. She hoped that he learned what he needed from this because if his touches got any more intimate (to her neck, chest, or ankle her mind traitorously thought) she would not be able to focus.  
  
“Right,” Rose continued, and was pleased that she did not sound breathless, “if you can accept that the universe is teeming with life and that (to put it in the most clichéd way I can possibly think of) we are not alone, the next step is time.  
  
“See, time isn’t a straight line going from cause to effect. Time is an entire dimension. We move in two dimensions easily, right? Left and right, forward and backward over the surface of the Earth. Then, with the proper equipment, we move in three dimensions- helicopters and zeppelins and the like, right? Allowing us to move up and down. Well, imagine a piece of equipment that allowed us to move in four dimensions the way we move in three. Something that, as we can go anywhere in space that we choose, allowed us to go anywhere in time. Forward? Backward? I say that because it’s possible. The equipment will exist, but because time isn’t a line that means that it  _does_  exist. Humans from Earth will figure it out in the next two to three thousand years, yeah? But there are other species that already have it, and there are even other species that don’t need it. Like a bird is built by nature to travel in the third dimension, there are species designed by their own natures to naturally travel in the fourth, right?”  
  
Rose leaned back looking at Sherlock and maintaining the contact of their hands waiting for a response.  
  
Sherlock had been able to detect no falsehood in her. Either she was completely mad or…  
  
Sherlock’s intellect rebelled against the idea, but something else inside of him- call it heart, or instinct, or imagination- believed every word that she said. He looked into her eyes and saw wary hope and resigned disappointment warring as he continued to sit silent. Something in him would not allow him to disappoint her- to see resignation dull those amber-gold eyes.  
  
“Okay,” Sherlock said, simply.  
  
“Okay? You believe me?” Rose was incredulous and thrilled.  
  
“I have questions,” he hedged.  
  
“Of course. Of course you have questions,” she did not sound disappointed in this fact, but more excited even than before. “Please ask them.”  
  
“How do you know all of this? Who are you?”  
  
Rose shook her head at him. “Don’t ask about me. You can ask about anything else, but don’t ask about me. Once we’ve seen everything in the Hub and once you really believe me about the rest of it, then I’ll tell you about me because it’s the hardest part.”  
  
Sherlock frowned at her.  
  
“Look, I’m not trying to put you off. I’ll answer your questions about me, I promise, but it’s easier to explain the universe than me just now.”  
  
Sherlock raised an eyebrow and Rose laughed.  
  
“That does sound a bit self-obsessed, doesn’t it? But it’s true, I promise.”  
  
“Fine,” he said, willing to let it go for the moment. “Why Cardiff then?”  
  
“Perfect question, Mr. Holmes,” she said with a smile that had her pink tongue caught in the corner of it. Had she been monitoring his pulse as he was hers, she would have noticed a sudden spike. “So, time and space knit together to create the fabric of reality, yeah? We perceive only a tiny crust of what is and the rest is under the surface. So if that fabric were to tear somewhere, the entire power of time, space, and the dimensions could spill out. It’s a fabulous power source, if you need the power of the universe and can convert it to work on your equipment, but it’s also dangerous. Dimensional creatures wander through on occasion and lots of visitors, particularly those with time and telepathic abilities, are drawn to it. Other visitors show up wanting to harvest the power. Sometimes it’s fine- it helps charge a lot of different types of equipment, but some of them want to use the power to more nefarious purposes. And that tear in the fabric of space-time runs right through Cardiff.”  
  
“What?” Sherlock cried, aghast.  
  
“I know!” Rose sounded thrilled, not frightened as she continued, “it sounds like science fiction! We’re sitting on top of one of the greatest power sources in the universe but, because humans don’t perceive the Time Vortex or the dimensions in the right way, we can’t tell. Frankly, the rift in Cardiff  _dulls_  our perceptions- that filter upstairs wouldn’t work half so well in London. You’d probably have seen through it, genius that you are, but the Rift just gives it an extra boost.”  
  
“What does being a genius have to do with it?”  
  
“People who rate on the genius end of the IQ scale and people with exceptional psychic skill (for a human) or psychic training tend to be able to see through perception filters easier than the rest of us. I’ve a paper that I could check you on, but it’ll have to wait until we get back to London. Like I say, it don’t work in Cardiff.”  
  
Sherlock watched Rose Tyler. He had seen her excited a few times in the short time that he had known her. She got excited about rabbits that glowed in the dark. She got excited about hacking into computers. She got excited about running for her life. She got excited about six-foot long wasps. She, apparently, got excited about rips in the fabric of reality, and time travel, and aliens. Sherlock supposed that he shouldn’t be surprised. He got excited about serial killers and robberies and autopsies. Really, when he thought about it in those terms, Sherlock Holmes and Rose Tyler might just be perfect for each other.  
  
Sherlock did not allow that last thought to even fully form before he dismissed it completely. He met Rose’s eyes, however, and the light shining from in them made- as it so often did- his blood seem to heat in his veins. Sherlock gifted her with a smile and said, “show me around then, and we’ll see what evidence you can provide for your assertions.”  
  
~?~?~?~?~  
  
Five hours later and it was closing in on midnight. Sherlock had met the weevils. He had stood witness to the necropsy on one of the wasp-creatures (he hadn’t even attempted their proper name) that had not survived the transport. He had met Dr. Stewart, the doctor who appeared to be 12-years-old but was, in fact, older than Sherlock and had gotten in the way of an alien device the previous year that had been intended to render him harmless by regressing him to an infant, but had been stopped. It had, luckily enough, not damaged his mind at all, so Torchwood allowed him to continue his work as a physician, even if they had to provide a step-stool to him for some of the higher shelves.  
  
Rose had been beside him for most of it. She had called the weevils ‘rift creatures’ and warned him that they actually were frequently running all over Cardiff wreaking havoc. She had introduced him to Dr. Stewart and talked about how that was the other side of time-travel and time-manipulation technology- the use as a weapon.  
  
“Imagine,” she had said, seriously, “all of the power of time and space. All of the knowledge of what is, what was, and what could be. Imagine that running through a human mind- ghastly destructive creatures that we are. You could wave your hand and pull another creature apart, atom by atom, or destroy them in such a way that they never were. Simply un-make them so that they were never born.” Her eyes had been fathomless as she had said this. Not seeing him, seeing nothing, or everything, Sherlock could not tell.  
  
She had left him then, allowing him to watch the necropsy in silence and mull over everything he had seen that day.  
  
The wasps were real.  
  
The young man had knowledge far beyond his years.  
  
The weevils could have been people in rubber masks, but they would have had to be beyond even film-grade masks to fool him.  
  
The ‘perception filter’ on the top floor was real. He had spent nearly an hour going through the entire area trying to find a trick. There was none.  
  
The weapon he had used was real.  
  
Sherlock could not deny that Rose Tyler had lied about nothing that he could tell. His mind still reeled with the implications of what he had seen and learned that day, but his imagination and his heart sang with the possibilities. He believed Rose Tyler, and he believed in the impossible. He had to find her and tell her, and then she owed him an explanation about herself.  
  
He finally found her seated at a desk with her rose-embellished laptop open in front of her, a scatter of papers around her, and a paper cup empty of anything but a tea bag and a few dribbles of cold dregs. Her arms were folded on the desk and her head rested on them, face turned toward him as he entered. In repose she looked no more than 19. She was all dark eyelashes and soft pink lips and golden halo of hair. Her mouth naturally curved upward as though she was having a sweet dream or her natural inclination was to smile.  
  
Sherlock stopped three paces away from her, unwilling to move closer and disturb the picture of innocent beauty that she made there. She seemed to hear him- finely honest soldier’s instincts he suspected- and woke a moment later. Her eyes opened and she blinked away the murkiness of sleep. She sat up and saw him watching her. She stiffened for a moment- not used to being caught vulnerable, he deduced- but relaxed after barely an instant of fear.  
  
“Sorry ‘bout that,” she said, with a yawn. “Been a bit of a long day, and the paperwork was boring.” She stretched displaying a smooth strip of pale skin between her tight black top and her loose black trousers. Sherlock’s mouth went a bit dry and he moved his eyes back to her face quickly.  
  
“The human need for sleep can be regulated,” Sherlock said, trying to inject some logic into his mind that was currently being made fuzzy by the soft-eyed, pink-cheeked, tousle-haired woman sitting before him. “Sleeping in 20 minute breaks every four hours gives the body enough rest and means that one doesn’t waste nearly as much time unconscious. I tend to find sleep a waste of time that could be better spent working.”  
  
Rose stared at him, eyes wide and mouth partly open. His accent was different, his look was different, but the words were nearly identical to something the Doctor had said to her when complaining about her sleeping habits. She shook herself to come back to the present noting that her shocked trip to the annals of memory had not gone un-observed by Sherlock.  
  
“You know that sleep schedule will actually send you ‘round the twist after about four months on it, right?”  
  
“I only maintain it when I have a case. Otherwise, I sleep when I am tired and remain asleep until I awake.”  
  
Rose laughed. “All right, all right, I sleep an inefficient quantity. Not the first time I’ve heard that, I’ll tell you. So, what do you think of Torchwood’s Cardiff Hub?”  
  
“It’s an excellent facility to deal with extra-terrestrials and the effects of a rift in time and space that runs through the city,” Sherlock said, trying to let her know that he believed her.  
  
“Yeah, the term is ‘aliens,’” she said, blandly. “’Extra-terrestrial’ is too Earth-Centric. We’re alien to most of the visitors, and if we were to travel, we’d be terrestrials, but not members of whatever planet we landed on, yeah? Alien is the universal term.” Her eyes were sparkling by the end of this lecture.  
  
“I stand corrected.”  
  
“You’re welcome to sit, if you like,” she said, flashing that tongue-touched grin that Sherlock still found he had trouble breathing around.   
  
He sprawled into a computer chair he pulled over from another desk and looked at Rose over steepled fingers.   
  
Rose, for her part, stood and stretched again, then curled her legs into the chair underneath her and sat looking for all the world like a curious cat.  
  
“The next bit is me telling you about myself, right?”  
  
“I believe that was the agreement, yes.”  
  
“So, Mr. Holmes, are you only saying that you believe me so that I’ll solve the Mystery of Rose Tyler for you?”  
  
Sherlock frowned at her and did not deign to answer verbally.  
  
Rose raised a single eyebrow at him. “I’m trusting you with a lot, you know,” she said, “all of my secrets in fact. Mickey and Jake are the only people on my team who know all of what I’m considering telling you. Tosh, Gwen and Owen don’t know- not all of it, anyway, they do know parts of it. My mum and dad know, but not my little brother. Well, he’s too young to understand anyway. So there’s five people on the entire planet who know what I’m about to tell you. I think I have every right to check that your motives are pure.”  
  
Sherlock smiled at her then. A real smile. A full smile. He didn't hide it this time because he'd thought of this.  
  
“The reason that I am a consulting detective and not a member of the police force, Rose Tyler,” Sherlock began, deliberately rolling her name in his mouth in a way that he had done before, “is that the outcome of the case doesn't really matter to me. I enjoy the mental stimulation of  _solving_ , but tend to find the actual answers boring in themselves. I enjoy the puzzles, but not the final products, as it were. In this instance, however, I am not solving. All I get is the answer, the picture, the product. However, it is worth it because....” And here Sherlock stuck. He knew what was on the tip of his tongue, but he could not bring himself to say it. It was too much. It revealed too much.  
  
“Because?” Rose asked. Her voice was soft, and just a trifle unsteady.  
  
“Because...” Sherlock tried again, but could not continue.  
  
They both waited in the silence for a timeless, breathless moment.  
  
“Why is it worth it, Sherlock?”  
  
It was the first time that she had used his first name since they had run into each other again. For some reason, his name on her tongue loosened his.  
  
“Because it is you, Rose Tyler. The answer is you.”  
  
“Oh,” she let out with a breathless gasp. “Okay.” She paused for another moment, not quite able to look at him. “Okay,” she gasped again, her voice just slightly higher than usual. “Okay.” Finally she was able to meet his eyes.  
  
Sherlock could not suppress a smug smile at the breathless quality of her voice.  
  
“Right... well now that you've said that, let's completely ruin it by proving just how mad I am,” Rose said, unable to meet Sherlock's smile.   
  
He could see that she really believed that- he would not believe this part. He wondered then what could possibly be so unbelievable that she was so certain that he would run in fear when he had decided that the idea of a universe full of strange and terrible creatures was completely true, and that those creatures were frequently drawn to Cardiff.  
  
Rose took a deep breath and began. “Okay, so it's 1879 and Great Britain is still a monarchy. Queen Victoria is traveling north into Scotland when a tree falls on the train tracks and she is forced to take a carriage to continue the journey. She stops for a night in a manor house where there is an alien plot set up to possess her and take over the country during the Industrial Revolution. So imagine then that there are two people who aren't where they meant to be, but are exactly where they were needed and they save the Queen from the alien. What would the world be like then? If Queen Victoria hadn't died in Scotland in 1879, Great Britain would have remained a true monarchy until the middle of the 20th century, and the royal family would remain to this day in figurehead positions. India would not have gained independence from Britain until after the Second World War. Lots of little ways that the world- really the entire universe- would be just a little bit different.  
  
“But, you see, those two people weren't there, and Queen Victoria died in 1879. The survivors created an institute to study and defend against the alien threat and named it after the Manor house- Torchwood Estate. Great Britain became a republic and India was released from colonial rule and became the social and technological giant that it is today. That's how it is.  
  
“Now this is where it gets complicated. That night in 1879, in Scotland was an important event. Couldn't really tell you why the monarch of a small country on a small, barely-developed planet mattered, but it did. So there was a... separation. Queen Victoria died, and this world was created, but also, Queen Victoria was saved and another world was created. Those two worlds run parallel to one-another.   
  
“You’ve probably heard of the multiverse theory- that every decision made creates a new universe in the multiverse, right? Well, that theory’s not exactly true. Time is too flexible for that. There are big events that create universes, and there are small events that don’t. Choosing in the morning to wear a blue shirt or a black one doesn’t create a new universe. Queen Victoria dying in Scotland does.  
  
“So, in a universe where Great Britain has a Prime Minister and a Queen rather than a president, there was a man named Peter Alan Tyler and a woman named Jackie Andrea Suzette Prentice, and they fell in love and got married and had a little girl. And Pete invented a health drink that he called Vitex, but no one really much liked it and he never made much money at it. Then, when their daughter was a little less than a year old, he got hit by a car and died. Jackie and their daughter lived the next 18 years on a council estate. Jackie was a hairdresser and the daughter left school at 16 for a boy who ended up not being worth her time. That daughter came home eventually and settled in with a new boyfriend named Mickey who’d been her best friend all her life and got a job in a shop. It was an entirely ordinary life, and nothing would ever have changed, not really, if she’d gotten out of work on time one night.”  
  
Rose sighed now. She had been staring at her folded hands in her lap during the entire telling of this story. She now looked up and met Sherlock’s eyes. “This is where it gets even more unbelievable. I’d like a cup of tea before we get into it, do you want one?” She got up and moved past him without giving him time to respond.


	5. The Detective and the Lonely God

Sherlock followed her, silently to the little breakroom with the coffee machine and a kettle and watched her prepare both beverages. She moved restlessly and wouldn’t meet his eyes. She didn’t speak, but her body language did not give him an opening for speech either. He ignored this, however. He was the master at ignoring social mores.  
  
“You were born in another universe,” he said, baldly.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“How did you end up in this one?”  
  
Rose sighed, cradling a cup of tea in her hands as she watched the coffee drip into the carafe below.   
  
“For the first 19 years of my life, nothing happened,” she said, as though she were telling a story that she knew by rote. “I wasn’t particularly brave, or clever, or ambitious. I had a job in a shop, a boyfriend I was fond of, and a life that was as much as I believed that I could expect. It was all so incredibly ordinary, but that was what I was: ordinary.  
  
“So then one day, I got stuck at work late delivering the lottery money to the head electrician’s office in the basement of the store. I couldn’t find him, though, and then all of the shop dummies that were in storage there in the basement came to life and started chasing me. Sounds mad, yeah? But it happened. That’s when I stopped being ordinary. I ran from them, but they cornered me. I thought I would die there, but then this bloke- this mad, beautiful, brusque bloke grabbed my hand and told me to run, pulling me off into the service lift and saving my life. He looked about 40, had dark hair, the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, and a Manchurian accent- he's got two hearts, but I didn't know it yet. He told me to run for my life, and then he blew up my job, mad bastard that he was.  
  
“The next day he found me- he said by accident- in my mum’s apartment. He told me his name was The Doctor. He took my hand and told me that he could feel the turn of the Earth, and then he told me to forget him. I didn’t, obviously. I went looking for him and he saved me again from another dummy that had been done up to look like Mickey. We were running away and he pulled me into this blue box- a Police Public Call Box. Apparently in the ‘50s there were these phone boxes that you could call the police from if you needed them, and that’s what he pulled me into to save me. It was about a metre and a half square from the outside, but inside it was the size of a cathedral- huge arched ceilings with coral struts and a hexagonal console in the middle. Completely overwhelming. Then he tells me he’s an alien, that this is his ship, that the inside is in a different dimension than the outside, and that we’re going to chase down whatever is making the plastic dummies move. So we did, and he saved the world, and I saved him, and then he dropped me off at home.  
  
“He asked me if I wanted to go with him- his ship could go anywhere in the universe, he said, and did I want to come? Of course I did. He was offering me the universe to explore and experience, but there was Mickey and my mum and that ordinary life- and he was so dangerous and mad and impossible. I was a coward and I said no, and then he left me. Just said ‘okay, bye then’ and took off in his ship that made a sound like the universe stretching and disappeared. I knew it was the worst decision I’d ever made, but I’d made it and I lived with it for a minute until he was back and he told me that it also traveled in time. He offered me all of time and space on a plate, and I couldn’t turn him down a second time.  
  
“We traveled the universe together for a year- I saw the future, watched the Earth destroyed by the expanding sun, met Charles Dickens, my father, the bravest con-man in the universe, and the most dangerous creatures that have ever existed, and then he died. He died saving my life. But Time Lords- that was his species, Time Lord- they don’t die. When they’re about to die every cell in their body changes- regenerates. He got a new face, a new body, a new voice. He had new mannerisms, liked new foods… he was a completely different man, but he had the same memories, the same moral code, the same… soul, to put it in a metaphysical sense. We traveled for another year after that- the pair in Scotland who saved Queen Victoria? That was us. In that time we accidentally fell through a crack between the universes and landed in a London that had zeppelins in the sky, Cybermen in warehouses, and- though we didn’t learn that at the time- Sherlock Holmes living in it. We saved the universe from the Cybermen, but Mickey chose to stay behind to clean up. The Doctor and I went back to exploring the universe until one day we discovered that there were creatures pressing their way through the walls of the universe on Earth. The last of the Cybermen from this universe, trying to get into mine. The Doctor had a brilliant plan to send them back into the space between the universes- he called it The Howling, The Void or Hell. He tried to send me away to safety, but I came back, because what was the point of safety? I’d been safe and ordinary and human, and none of those things mattered to me anymore, I wanted the universe. I wanted to be extraordinary. Most of all, though, I wanted him. I was so desperately, pathetically in love with him, and he was 900 years older than me and knew that my lifetime was barely a drop in the bucket to his.  
  
“We sent the Cybermen back into Hell, but I fell too. Pete caught me- the Pete from this world who had made it big and never had a daughter, whose wife had been cyberized and who had fallen in love with a copy of her in my mum who'd already been brought through- and he took me here. I got one last chance to say goodbye to The Doctor- on a beach in Norway. He sent a projection of himself through, but said that he couldn’t come through or bring me home because it would collapse the walls of both universes. I told him I loved him, and I thought he might be about to tell me the same, but the gap closed and he never got the words out. I spent five years alternately desperate for him and hating everything about him. I love him to this day, but he left me behind and told me it was impossible to get back through to him.”  
  
“Someone once told me that they didn’t like the word impossible,” Sherlock said quietly.  
  
Rose jumped. She had been standing, unmoving, her story being told without any real interaction from her brain. She had forgotten Sherlock standing there behind her and the coffee pot in front of her had blurred nearly five minutes before. Her tea had gone cold untasted.  
  
“I wouldn’t go back now if I could,” she said, quietly. “Like I told Mickey, I’m not The Doctor’s Rose anymore. If I’d never left him, if I’d still been with him, I would be, and that would be great. The Doctor’s Rose was brilliant, brave, clever, funny. She saved The Lonely God from his loneliness. But I’m not her. I’m Bad Wolf, the Defender of the Earth. I just hope he’d be proud of me.”  
  
“I don’t see how he could fail to be,” Sherlock said, earnestly. He had watched Rose tell her story, growing more tense and anguished with every passing word. He knew that she expected him to call her a liar, to storm out in a rush of anger, and a cloud of disbelief.   
  
He examined what she had told him in the caverns of his mind.   
  
Point one: there are creatures filling the cosmos beyond the imagination of men. Sherlock had now seen clear evidence- had, in fact, been menaced by evidence of precisely that. When examined logically, the universe was vast, even limitless, and old so it was  _more_  logical to believe that humans were not alone than that they were.  
  
Point two: time travel was possible. This, Sherlock would keep in reserve. He had no great understanding of theoretical physics- the evidence of his senses was more to his tastes than those things which cannot be seen and therefore do not affect the day-to-day life of the world. Rose had explained time in clear terms, and he was inclined to believe that she believed what she said. For the short term, that would satisfy him until she could provide him with evidence.  
  
Point three: parallel universes. Sherlock had heard of the theory of the multiverse. He had given it little credence, though he supposed that he could see the logic in the theory. Again, he would await evidence but, again, he would allow that Rose believed, and he could not dismiss her theories entirely.  
  
Point four: this was the point that brought it all together. Rose. Rose and her Doctor. A woman who claimed to be from another universe, who had traveled in both time and space with an alien who could manipulate both, in a ship that was bigger on the inside and looked like a Police Public Call Box. This was, after all, the most unbelievable thing that he had ever heard. He should not believe, but he did. Sherlock Holmes, though he might claim to depend only on his mind, on his logic and his knowledge, was a creature of instinct. He relied on it to know when there was something beneath the surface of a newspaper article, a text message, a phone call, or a crime scene. Sherlock's instincts sang that Rose was telling the truth. The evidence existed, and he would find it, but for now, he believed.  
  
“You've seen the stars,” he said, hoping to prompt her to speak again.  
  
“I've saved the universe,” she said softly. “I once had all of the power of time and space flowing through my mind. I used it as a weapon and committed genocide with it. A species that wanted to wipe out all of humanity, but I wiped them out first with a wave of my hand, like I said before. I didn't do it to save humanity though. I only did it to save The Doctor.”  
  
Rose might have called it Earth-Centrism again, but Sherlock found that he could not feel sorry for the species that wanted to wipe out his home planet. He was pleased that Rose had destroyed them, whatever her motivation.  
  
“Is that all?” he asked, “Is there anything else?”  
  
Rose looked at him in shock. “You believe all of that? I've traveled the stars, loved and been loved by a god, was born in another universe, and live in this one defending the Earth because I don't know another way to live? That's all right with you?”  
  
“Why wouldn't it be?”  
  
“Because it's completely mad, Sherlock Holmes.”  
  
“Does Mickey or Gwen or Tosh or Jake think it's mad?”  
  
“Of course they do, but we're all at least half-mad, that's the only way we can live with each other and the lives we lead.”  
  
“I told you the day we met that there are those that would call me a psychopath. Doesn't that imply that I'm a bit more than half-mad?”  
  
Rose stared at him, open-mouthed. “There's one more thing. I wouldn't bother telling anyone else this, but you have to know. The universe that I come from, I'd heard the name Sherlock Holmes before. Everyone in the world had. In the late 19th century there was this author by the name of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote a whole series of short stories and novels about a consulting detective by the name of Sherlock Holmes. They were written in the voice of his partner, Doctor John Watson. They were fiction.”  
  
This fact gave Sherlock pause. “Did you read them?”  
  
“Wasn't much of a reader before my time with The Doctor.”  
  
“So you don't know how similar they might be to my real life and my real cases.”  
  
“That's the funny thing. Remember when we met? One of the most famous cases of the fictional Sherlock Homes was called  _The Hound of the Baskervilles_. I don't know how the novel went, like I say, I never read it, and Mickey read it over 10 years ago, but it sounds like it all went a lot like the book- not exactly, of course, but the book was written with 19th century sensibilities in mind, of course.”  
  
“So you think that I might be a creation of a man's mind?”  
  
“Other way around, actually. Time isn't a straight line, right? I think that your exploits may have filtered through the universe in some way back to Conan Doyle. See, I've looked him up in this universe, and he was a bit of a spiritualist. Maybe he was in my universe too- in touch with ESP and that kind of bollocks, and maybe he picked up on you from between the universes, and maybe he wrote about it as best he understood it from his perspective in the world. That's what Mickey thinks.”  
  
Sherlock nodded. Of all of the things she had told him, this was the hardest to wrap his genius mind around.  
  
“Look, like I say, I never read the books, and Mickey really didn't either. Nor my mum, and we're the only people from that universe in this one. We don't know your future, and I, for one, don't want to. I'd rather watch it happen. Maybe participate as I'm able. What I just told you doesn't change who you or John are, yeah?”  
  
Sherlock stood quiet for several minutes, processing. Finally he looked at Rose and smiled again. She was right, it didn't change who he was.  
  
Rose grinned. “Not going to stop me from getting a little excited any time I get to go to 221B Baker Street though- it was a tourist spot where I grew up and I never went.”  
  
Sherlock laughed out loud. Rose listened to the sweet sound, thrilled that she had brought it about. She must do that more often, she thought. If he allowed her. The idea that he might not was sobering.  
  
“All right, Mr. Holmes,” she said, once he had stopped laughing, “have you any other questions?”  
  
“None that need answers tonight,” he said. He had sobered at her use of his surname, she observed.  
  
“Then perhaps I should go get some sleep. Apparently you have no need of such human comforts as rest, but I do require at least a bit to function in the morning.” A thought occurred to Rose, and she wondered why it had taken so long to surface. “Sherlock,” she said, suddenly, “what  _are_  you doing in Cardiff?”  
  
He smiled again. “Zeppelin layover from Plymouth.”  
  
Rose grinned back. “Did you catch the bad guys in Plymouth?”  
  
“Naturally.”  
  
“What were you planning on doing overnight?”  
  
“Um...” Sherlock realized that he had given it no thought. He had been so busy trying to find something with which to occupy his time and had assumed that whatever he found would keep him busy through the night. Now it was too late to find a hotel and he had hours stretching before him with nothing to do. The very thought made him twitchy again.  
  
Rose laughed again. “Not a lot of patience for domestics, I see,” she chuckled at him. “Come on then, I've a place you can kip. When's your flight out in the morning?”  
  
“11:30,” he answered automatically, “but you really don't need to...”  
  
“Of course I don't need to, but I'd like to see you try to stop me.”  
  
Sherlock was now treated to a fact that alien kings, Earth heads-of-state, reckless Time agents, toughs from the council estates, and lonely gods from other universes already knew: when Rose Tyler expected something of you- whether it was compliance with her plan, good behavior, the release of her best friend from prison, or sleeping on the couch she directed you to- you complied or faced dire consequences.


	6. What Are We?

Sherlock was losing count of the number of times that Rose Tyler had done the unbelievable or impossible today. He was currently seated on a couch in the sitting area of the hotel suite she was renting wearing Mickey Smith's pajamas listening to the water running in the en-suite as Rose prepared to sleep in the bed of the little room.   
  
They would be sleeping in a room together. Not in the same bed, but Sherlock could not quite overcome the implied intimacy of the situation.  
  
Him in borrowed pajamas. Rose Tyler in her nightclothes.  
  
She had showered just on the other side of the wall from him.  
  
He would have to shower on the other side of the wall from her.  
  
Sherlock was brilliant. He had more control over his mind and intellect than any other person that he had ever met. He simply did not get distracted like this- he did not hyper-focus on trivialities. The fact that Rose Tyler had been naked not 5 feet from him in a straight line was completely trivial.  
  
Repeating it in his head did not seem to force his brain to take notice, however.  
  
He forced his mind back to the things he had been told today. He wished that he could get a copy of the books about him that Rose had mentioned. Then again, he considered, that might take away a lot of the fun of actually solving the cases. He was glad that Rose did not know the stories- she might live them out with him instead.  
  
Why had he thought that? He had a partner- John. That was all he needed. He didn't require anyone additional.  
  
Rose Tyler interrupted his reverie by leaving the bathroom clad in sweatpants and a vest top, face scrubbed free of makeup, damp hair french braided over one ear and hanging loose over the other. She wandered over to the cupboard and pulled down an extra blanket and pillow that the hotel provided.  
  
“You're really too tall for that couch, but it's better than sleeping on Millennium Fountain all night, and I don't like you enough to give you the bed.”  
  
“I'm sure I'll be fine. I don't need much sleep.”  
  
“Whatever you end up doing, just don't wake me up then.” Rose reached up to plait the other half of her hair.  
  
“Rose?”  
  
She glanced over at him, not stopping her work on her hair. “Yeah?”  
  
“What is on the chain?”  
  
Sherlock had wondered about the silver chain that she wore since he had met her. She wore it now, as she readied for bed. She wore it on dates. She wore it to work. He wondered if she even took it off to shower, but pushed the image away from his mind before it had time to fully coalesce.  
  
“Oh, that,” Rose said. She finished with her hair and tied off the end, then she walked over and sat on the couch with him, reaching into her shirt for the pendant. She withdrew a simple Yale key.  
  
“A key?” Sherlock asked.  
  
“Clever deduction, Mr. Holmes.”  
  
“What is it to?”  
  
“Not going to pull its history out of thin air?”  
  
Sherlock glared at her.  
  
“Sorry. It’s a key to the last TARDIS in the multiverse. The Doctor’s third heart. A sentient time-and-space ship who gets into your head to translate languages and always takes you where you _need_  to go, even if not always where you  _want_  to go.”  
  
“Why wear it now?”  
  
“Hope, I suppose. Remembrance.” She sent him a shifty grin and said, “sentiment.”  
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes.  
  
“It reminds me that it wasn’t all just some fabulous dream I had when I was 19. Also, it’s made of an alloy that, as far as I have been able to determine, isn’t found in this universe. Better to keep it close to hand than to have it possibly fall into the wrong hands.”  
  
“Oh,” Sherlock said, uncertain how to respond.  
  
They silent on the sofa together for several minutes. There was one more question that Sherlock had about all of this, but he wasn’t really sure how to broach it. He took a deep breath and tried anyway.  
  
“I know more of your secrets than almost anyone else on the planet.”  
  
“Yeah, and if you're indiscreet with them, I have the technology to wipe them from your memory as well as every piece of investigative theory you've ever learned. I can leave you barely qualified to work in a shop. I wouldn't, but keep in mind that I work with some people who aren't nearly as nice as I am.”  
  
Sherlock watched her as she said that. She was half-joking, he thought, but not entirely. “Of course. Confidentiality between consulting detective and client.”  
  
Rose raised an eyebrow. “Is that our relationship? Detective and client? I can't remember you having done much detecting for me.”  
  
“I caught Dr. Franklin.”  
  
“True, but you did that for Henry Knight, not for me.”  
  
“I helped with the wasps.”  
  
“Not a lot of detection required. They were, after all, six feet long.”  
  
“Well then, what is our relationship?”  
  
“What do you want it to be, Sherlock?”  
  
Sherlock looked at her. He didn't have relationships, not in the crude sense that most people meant by the word. He'd had sex, but didn't find it nearly as stimulating as puzzle-solving. He didn't consider most women worth his time, and wasn't even marginally interested in men. With her, however...  
  
He liked the way his first name fell off her tongue. He liked the way her breath always hitched when he said her name. He liked that she desired him. He liked that she bullied him into going to lunch with her, or sitting still, or being polite. He liked her company.  
  
“I'd like to see you... More than every few weeks, or when I hack into your files.”  
  
Rose smiled. “If you see me in London, the Paparazzi will come back.”  
  
“It was never them I was angry with. I don't like the way they portray you. You're smarter and better than that.”  
  
“It's necessary, Sherlock. Got to maintain my disguise. I didn't exist, quite literally, until five years ago.”  
  
“I know, but I still don't like it.”  
  
“Either get over it or quit reading the tabs.”  
  
“I never much liked them anyway.”  
  
A slow smile spread over Rose's face. “So we'll be friends?”  
  
“I don't have friends, I just have one.”  
  
“Better with two.”


End file.
